“Go on favoring it. It’s a growing child.” “Thanks,” said Tom gratefully. “You’re right. This is foul-tasting tonic, but it’s good to be reminded how far we haven’t traveled yet.” Walter’s hand strayed gently to his friend’s shoulder. “Short fights aren’t interesting,” he said, and turned to the girl, whose patient aloofness through this little conversation, so unintelligible to her, was, again, revealing. “Go back to the hymn,” he said. “A hymn?” The word had no meaning for her. “‘Lead Kindly Light,’” he explained. “Oh, that,” she said, and sang it through without interruption. It was street singing, adapted to penetrate through the closed windows of Staithley and by sheer shrillness to wring the withers of the charitable. Tom Bradshaw, amateur of music, found nothing in this insistent volume of song to account for Walter Pate’s interest; she made, tunefully, a great noise in a little room, and he wished that Walter would stop her, though not for the same reason as before. But Walter did not stop her, he listened and he watched with acute absorption and when she had finished, “again,” he said, gesturing Tom back into his chair with a menacing fist. “It goes through me like a dentist’s file in a hollow tooth,” Tom protested. “You fool,” said Mr. Pate pityingly, and, to the girl, “Sing.” “Now,” he said when she had ended, “I don’t say art. Art’s the unguessable. I say voice and I say lungs. I say my name’s Walter Pate and I know. Give me two years on her and you’ll know too. If you’d like me to tell you who’ll sing soprano when the Choral Society do the ‘Messiah’ at Christmas of next year, it’s that girl.” “’Oo are you gettin’ at?” she asked. “I’m getting at you, getting at you with the best voice-producing system in the North of England--Walter Pate’s. And when I’ve finished with you, you’ll be--well, you won’t be singing in the street.” “Well, I can’t see it, Walter,” said Tom. “You’ve the wrong letters after your name to see it,” said Walter, “but I’ve made a find to-night, and I’m gambling two years’ hard work on the find’s being something that will make the musical world sit up. Buy a cheap brooch and it’s tin washed with gold. That voice is the other way round. It’s tin on top and gold beneath and I’m going digging for the gold.” Not, he might have added, because gold has value in the market. If Walter Pate had discovered a voice which, under training, was to become the pride of Staithley, that was all he wanted; he wouldn’t hide under a bushel his light as the discoverer and the instructor, but all he wanted else was proof in support of his often expressed opinion that musically Staithley led Lancashire (the rest of the world didn’t matter) and he thought he had found his proof in--he turned to the girl. “You haven’t told us your name,” he said. “Mary Ellen Bradshaw,” she told him, and “Lord!” said Tom. “You’ll waste your time.” “I shan’t,” said Walter. “There’s grit amongst that tribe. You’re here to prove it.”